Lincoln on Inequality
“I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it.”
This quote spoken by Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass in 1863 is telling of his character in multiple regards. It has been cited within the context of his humble personality when he admitted he was not as quick and willing to support black soldiers as Douglass wished. However, it is also reflective of his strength of conviction in the beliefs he held throughout his life. While most historians agree that Lincoln was thoroughly consistent in his declaration that he was antislavery, it is less accepted as to the motivation of why he was antislavery. To address the motivations behind his antislavery beliefs and goal of the end of slavery requires that his beliefs about the role and status of African Americans be established.
Opinion amongst historians is diverse and wide-ranging in regards to how Abraham Lincoln approached issues of race and equality. Don Fehrenbacher criticized Lincoln’s failure to move beyond the immediate horror and damage of slavery towards confronting, “that systematic racial discrimination might be, like slavery, a stain on the national honor and a crime against mankind.”[1] David Lightner found that Lincoln employed a politician’s touch in determining when to support black equality in America and how much equality white Americans were willing to tolerate. “I believe that if Lincoln’s words and actions are understood within their specific historical context, it becomes evident that when Lincoln said or did things that were inconsistent with egalitarianism, he did so with the deliberate intent of misleading his countrymen with regard to his personal beliefs and ultimate aims.”[2] Lerone Bennet took the provocative stance that Lincoln did not care about black Americans at all, “Insofar as it can be said that Lincoln had a policy it was to rid America of both slaves and blacks.”[3] Others employ historical empathy in categorizing Lincoln’s views and attitudes on racial equality within the context of the generational attitudes of the mid-nineteenth century, “. . .whether Lincoln changed his mind, the weight of evidence and logic seems to support the hypothesis that Lincoln died with the same basic views on black-white relations that he had held tenaciously throughout his public life.”[4]
From a limited summary of the historical research on Lincoln’s personal beliefs about the role and status of black Americans in society, it is clear that his views were complex. At the most they were in flux and evolving and, at the least, they were stunted and inconsistent. Considering that his life was cut short before he could more specifically develop what post-emancipation America would look like, it is valuable for historians to consider how his beliefs on racial equality could have influenced the role and status of black Americans after the Civil War. By analyzing and evaluating a selection of primary documents and statements, both public and private, made by Lincoln throughout his life, one will not find an absolute answer to what his beliefs were about racial equality. But one can gain a clearer picture of the fault lines that Abraham Lincoln stood on and what distinctions he was willing to make about the role of African Americans in society. Throughout the selection of documents taken from three pivotal periods in Lincoln’s life consider the following question: How did Abraham Lincoln differ between his beliefs regarding racial equality and slavery?
Letter to Williamson Durley--October 3, 1845
The letter to Williamson Durley introduced some new concerns in Abraham Lincoln’s approach to slavery and race that both confirmed stances of Lincoln’s found in the “Protest of Slavery” and 1841 Letter to Mary Speed documents, but also demonstrated new considerations Lincoln held for the majority of his political career. Lincoln was an Illinois congressman in the House of Representatives when he wrote this letter. While he only served one term in Congress in his early career, it demonstrated both the political ambition he held as well as the height of his success as a Whig. It is interesting to note that Lincoln saw the height of his early political career parallel the Whig Party in the mid-to-late 1840s. From the new vantage point of Lincoln’s higher political office, he expressed new concerns with regards to slavery, but again little for racial equality.
Williamson Durley Abraham Lincoln
The letter itself centered on the political events of the mid-1840s—the election of 1844 and the annexation of Texas—with slavery as a periphery. It was written one year after Henry Clay lost the presidential election to James K. Polk who ran predominantly on an expansionist platform with “54° 40’, or Fight!” as the rallying cry. Polk called for the annexation of the independent Republic of Texas into the Union while Clay presented an inconsistent resistance to such plans in his campaign. The election was particularly close in New York with Whigs such as Lincoln claiming that the third-party candidate James G. Birney siphoned much-needed votes in a critical state from Clay. Some claimed that Clay lost New York (and ultimately the presidency) by a margin as close as 5,272 votes.[1]
James K. Polk Henry Clay James G. Birney
This was the primary focus of Lincoln’s letter. The Liberty Party was an abolitionist party and its members in New York who voted for Birney pivoted on the issue of Texas annexation. Lincoln was among several members of Congress who began to see slavery as a looming issue of debate and he addressed Durley, an abolitionist from Putnam County Illinois and member of the Liberty Party, in an effort to reconcile the possible political power of Liberty Party voters with the political tenets of the Whig Party.
“Friend Durley:
When I saw you at home, it was agreed that I should write to you and your brother Madison. Until I then saw you, I was not aware of your being what is generally called an abolitionist, or, as you call yourself, a Liberty-man; though I well knew there were many such in your county. I was glad to hear you say that you intend to attempt to bring about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the whigs proper, and such of the liberty men, as are whigs in principle on all questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can perceive, by such union, neither party need yield any thing, on the point in difference between them. If the whig abolitionists of New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be president, whig principles in the ascendent, and Texas not annexed; whereas by the division, all that either had at stake in the contest, was lost. And, indeed, it was extremely probable, beforehand, that such would be the result. As I always understood, the Liberty-men deprecated the annexation of Texas extremely; and, this being so, why they should refuse to so cast their votes as to prevent it, even to me, seemed wonderful. What was their process of reasoning, I can only judge from what a single one of them told me. It was this: “We are not to do evil that good may come.” This general, proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply? If by your votes you could have prevented the extention, &c. of slavery, would it not have been good and not evil so to have used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder? By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree can not bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil?”[2]
The overall topic and tone of this document is based on political maneuvering for future coalitions and elections. Lincoln sought to add new voters to the Whig party, but he first addressed the voting record of the Liberty Men in 1844. Two problems were involved with abolitionists voting for Henry Clay, the first was that Clay was a slaveholder. Henry Clay was the leading advocate of many political beliefs that Lincoln subscribed to amongst which were national unity, investment in internal improvements, the use of economic institutions to promote economic equality and growth, and the need for educated and capable men to lead the Union towards those goals.[3] However, Henry Clay was also a living example of many different traits and beliefs Lincoln did not subscribe to. Though he was the “beau ideal of a statesman” for Lincoln, he was also a whiskey-drinking gambler and slaveholder—qualities Lincoln rejected personally and qualities which were a hard-sell to evangelicals and abolitionists in 1844. Lincoln addressed this issue in simple and direct terms. “If by your votes you could have prevented the extention, &c. of slavery, would it not have been good and not evil so to have used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder?” The wisdom of this pragmatism is clear, what was not as clear was Clay’s actual stance on the annexation of Texas. The second problem was Clay’s stance on the annexation of Texas. In the late summer of 1844, Clay began to reconsider his objection to annexation in the leading months to the election which cost him crucial votes in New York.[4] Lincoln did not address this consideration in the letter. He claimed that annexation or no, slaves would be brought to Texas and if Texas were not part of the United States, then those would be fewer slaves held in the South. While the politics of this argument were more complex than he let on, Lincoln clearly stood behind keeping slavery in America limited to the South.
“But I will not argue farther. I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation; inasmuch, as they were already a free republican people on our own model; on the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken because of annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left, where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to some extent, that with annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and continued in slavery, that otherwise might have been liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death—to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.”[5]
Lincoln framed the debate over slavery towards the institution itself rather than the plight of individual slaves or the plight of black people in America as a whole. This was not an issue of racial equality for Lincoln. Likewise, Lincoln further constricted his evaluation of slavery and efforts to live up to his antislavery statements by concentrating on the containment of slavery to the southern states to which it was practiced. This is a focused and well-considered viewpoint. Always a lawyer, Lincoln valued the legal protections the Constitution afforded slavery as that document was the supreme law of the land. This is consistent with his “Protest of Slavery” in 1837 and would remain so throughout his presidency. Economically, slavery was doomed in the South. Many critics and supporters of slavery alike understood the toll cotton production took on the soil; if contained to the South, the entire economy of slavery would collapse as slaveholders would be forced to sell their decreasingly usable slave at decreasingly valuable prices.[6] This was a view that was held by the Framers as well—while on a smaller scale men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington witnessed the toll tobacco took on Chesapeake soil. While Lincoln did not explicitly reference the Framers, he did reinforce his respect for their positions on the institution of slavery—it was constitutionally legal and was believed to be fated to a limited lifespan. Lincoln kept these two viewpoints throughout his political career. Therefore, Lincoln set his aim at the containment of slavery with an eye always towards a gradual death of the institution in the long-run. He defined that annexation was evil in so much as it would promote slavery into territories where it had not been held previously.
Republic of Texas Anti-Annexation Petition
Lincoln intimated that by allowing Clay to lose the election of 1844, the abolitionists in the Liberty Party inadvertently allowed for slavery to expand with the annexation into Texas. If one were inclined to follow the full logic of that argument, technically this allowed slavery to expand into a territory much larger than the original boundaries of Texas and possibly into the Utah and New Mexico territories as a result of the Mexican-American War. Regardless of tenuous hypotheticals, Lincoln presented a sophisticated view on the problem of slavery and the most realistic solution to address it. He believed that Free states must respect where it existed, though constantly strive to prevent its growth. Historians can see the problem with this solution both in selling it to enthusiastic abolitionists and understanding its context within a period westward expansion fueled by Manifest Destiny. America was on the eve of acquiring one-third of the geographic territory of Mexico, the work of containing southern slaveholders’ appetites for more land was cut out for them. But Lincoln left Durley and other Liberty Men with a hint of how to address this problem in future by reminding them that their actions assisted pro-annexation Polk in becoming President.
“To recur to the Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have viewed annexation as a much greater evil than I ever did; and I, would like to convince you if I could, that they could have prevented it, without violation of principle, if they had chosen.”[7]
This document also demonstrated that at a higher political office, Lincoln still did not address the issues of racial equality. He limited his focus to the containment of slavery as an institution. Considering his abolitionist audience with this letter, there is an added reason to why he avoided delving into motivations for opposing slavery and the impact it had on blacks in America in general. However, it was a recurring theme in documents from this part of his career to not address the peripheral damage the peculiar institution inflicted on racial equality in America. Lincoln throughout this document was more concerned with how best to manage and utilize the abolitionist populations in the 1840s than to engage with them in meaningful dialogue as to their goals.
[1] Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Williamson Durley [October 3, 1845], Roy Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 1: 247-248
[2] Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Williamson Durley [October 3, 1845], Roy Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 1: 247-248
[3] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 109, 131-132
[4] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 133-134
[5] Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Williamson Durley [October 3, 1845], Roy Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 1: 247-248
[6] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print. 133-134
[7] Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Williamson Durley [October 3, 1845], Roy Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 1: 247-248
